The Let's Play Archive

Part 18: Lesotho

Well I guess we're not going swimming with Sheela. Or outside. Or breathing or living. The game may say we have 150 days left but I think the LC scientists screwed that up. We've probably only got a week at best with the Earth's insides leaking all over the surface now.

What happened to our awesome mission briefings? Maybe Sombra and everyone are busy doing something else right now? The Moon Project spoilers: Right now is the heart of The Moon Project's campaign so they're a bit busy dealing with the invasion of the Moon.

Anyway, let's just pretend the Celestial Council and LC Command is preoccupied with something right now instead of admitting the writer got lazy.

That all said, we start in mid-combat. Some Crusher m1 hRs are attacking an ED outpost near our mineral patch. They can out-range this pillbox so I leave them to it.

As of this mission every technology in the game can be researched. We'll start with the Thunderer. It's the LC's bomber and it's an absolute terror on the battlefield.

Two LZs? What the fuck are they doing?

For once the UCS is well-armed and now that Neo's dead we don't have to worry about traitor robots!

The weather report wasn't kidding about the lava. Not only is all the water now gone from the surface, you'll find these pockets of lava. Only LC units can traverse them due to their hovering over the ground.

Fang brings out his personal escorts right as a bunch of Khrushchev heavy tanks attack our position. The Khrushchev is the ED's main heavy tank, similar to our Crusher.

But the tanks are unshielded, making them an easy target for our energy weapons. Hasn't the Dynasty learned about my love of electro-cannons by now?

There's another sneaky tunnel entrance here, but instead of exploring the tunnels I elect to destroy it. This one is literally sitting in the middle of our base so it's going to take too much work to guard from any sneak attacks coming from it.

The small map, plus Fang's nimbleness make it a cinch to find the ED base. They're hanging out to the east. I'm going to hit them fast so we can maximize our resource take.

The trees and plants at our HQ are dying.

The ED finally made a base that I can't sneak into. We'll be diving in head-first here. At least we've already gotten the power plant.

Resistance is tougher than usual, probably because we're going up against the defenses when they're still defending. I lost one of my Meteors here

The front of the base has fallen, but now the ED has started putting small towers with its vulnerable buildings! What the hell guys, you're making this too hard now.

The Thunderer is done! We don't have any weapons for it yet though so I'm not going to show it off on the unit construction screen.

The ED base is almost gone. Just need to take out the mining operation and this mission will be over.

Oh! That's right! I forgot to build a mine on my resources. The game gives you 20,000 CR to start with and I've been so busy smacking the ED around it just slipped my mind. I'll bring a mine down now.

The last power plant is down. With the small towers destroyed as well we just need to clean up.

There we go. We're gonna be sending almost 100,000 CR back to base. And we're going to get whatever the ED base had too. We can just about finish Catharsis with this. Seems like the endgame is a bit dull though. We're just going to tag-team the ED into oblivion with the help of our robot buddies.

You're telling me that after all the escort-less convoys, hacked robots and other bullshit I've had to put up with from the UCS I don't even get one mission where I can beat up the ED with them?

FUCK. YOU.

There's a bit of an issue here though. Fang's a UCS citizen. The UCS just declared war on the LC. He'll have to choose a side here. What will he do?

I'll let him speak for himself (taken from the manual for The Moon Project).

THE FANG - DESERTEUR posted:

Here is the recorded statement of Fang (UCS) to the Celestial Council of the Lunar Corporation:

The war of 2140 was pure hell. I was never too interested in politics and getting drafted was the last thing I expected. Since the machines did all the work, hardly any UCS citizens were what you would call battle-ready, so the army was made up mostly of college grads. The losses suffered in the first few months of the war were horrendous. GOLAN miscalculated and we paid the price - in blood. But it was worst for the cyborgs. Half machine
and half human, the official version says that only the bodies of volunteers were used. But that's a lie. After the war they all disappeared suddenly and all inquiries into their whereabouts ran into a stone wall of silence. At about this time the first NAIOS (Neuronal Architecture Independent Operating System) were unveiled. Black cubes big enough to house a human brain and some interfacing electronics, they were capable of running all battle machinery by themselves. Human recycling resources - that's all we are to these damn AI's. Of course I should mention that I can't prove any of this.

I don't know who won back then and frankly, I don't give a damn. The press, not surprisingly, gushed on and on about the glorious UCS victories, but I never attached much weight to propaganda. Like I said, I'm apolitical, even more now than before. CAD - Computer Aided Democracy - that's what we call it. What good can come out of it?

Neo started out as a console jockey but later got his radio-controlled drones into battle. We were in the same unit and experienced a lot of shit. Around the end of the war he threw in his lot with the ED, probably because his shenanigans were discovered. He managed to stash away tons of hardware for his "plan". I have no idea what exactly he was planning, but on a few occasions he implied he was onto something pretty hot. "Man, its just like the X files" he once told me. Then he kept calling me Scully. Most of the time I couldn't understand what he was talking about - he's sort of a walking dictionary of phrases, old films, books and that kind of stuff. We're talking mostly index, but he sure had a photographic memory. He could see or hear somebody or something once and never forget it. That's why the inspectors never managed to find any incriminating evidence on him.

When war flared up again, the Defense Ministry pulled the glider out of their hat like a rabbit. AREA 51 had basically been known since the last century. The only thing new was that those UFO freaks were right after all. Since they were unable to build in a NAIOS, a real live pilot was needed. Now, I'm not the best flying ace around - Rickenbacher had a dozen more kills than me. But these days the old guy needs at least a full tumbler of bourbon to stop his hands from shaking.

For the last ten years, I've never been without my gun. I know I'm paranoid, but when I see what happened to my old comrades I realize I've been lucky. I experience no joy in killing, but neither do I recoil from it. I am a professional soldier and I do my job - that's it. Do I know what a human life is worth? Of course I do - 1.65 credits! That's what a .50 ACP bullet for my pistol costs. At least that's the price at current UCS exchange rates. And this is why I want to remain here ....PLEASE!

Fang's request for political asylum was unanimously approved.

So there it is. Fang has full committed to the LC. And with his asylum approved he's now an LC citizen with all the rights and privileges that gives you.

The most mission update in the war. We've got to take out the UCS base too and I don't think that mass of robots was planning on coming to give us a formal declaration of war. Time to move the army back west and shore up the defenses.

Or maybe I should've kept them in the ruins of the ED base. The UCS sent what seems like its entire air force to destroy my new mines. Fortunately I kept some Meteors behind and they can clear out the Gargoyles before things get out of hand.

Unfortunately the UCS column shows up before I can get my Guardians down. And plasma cannons really hurt.

Fang personally leads the defense which is fortunate since those UCS Spiders are tearing through the Moons. The Craters are a bit tougher but they're so slow they won't show up for a few minutes. We've got to rely on Fang and the Moons to save the base.

The UCS attack force is wiped out right as the Craters show up.

Plasma really hurts buildings. I'll be putting shields on all my defensive buildings from now on otherwise the UCS will be able to make quick work of my base.

I notice there's a very convenient choke point leading out of the UCS base. Might as well take advantage of it, so I move my entire army over there. All the towers I built will be for naught but this will allow me to do some scouting on the UCS base.

The Thunderer has been upgraded to version 2 so it's time to work on weapons. The Thunderer can mount the Air Heavy Rocket Launcher and the Air Sonic Cannon. Don't bother with the rocket launcher, the Meteors can do the same job more effectively. The sonic cannon is what you want. Trust me.

This is a spectacular view of the UCS base. Looks like they've got pretty tough defenses between the small towers, large towers and fortresses. I have a clever idea...

Remember our friend the Weather Control Center? We haven't seen her in a while, but with no moisture left on Earth how are we going to conjure up a lightning storm?

The game gives you something very...unique on the endgame terrain.

I've got my first Crusher tank. That little Tiger walker blew up in one shot. I love the Crusher.

I inch the army a little closer so they can see the UCS base from the ridge. I'll need spotters for what I'm going to do with the Weather Control Centers.

The Air Heavy Sonic Cannon is done. Check out the Thunderer. Flying a fleet of these into the middle of a base will be devastating.

The UCS is bringing out the big guns. The Panther is the UCS's heavy tank like the Khrushchev or Crater and it's pretty good as almost all UCS heavy weapon mounts give you the secondary weapon.

One Panther versus the entire LC army is a mismatch, as good as the Panther is.

Our WCCs are ready. Meteors? What could that button do?

Oh my.

That is the magic of the Meteor shower everyone. It's hands down, the best superweapon. The lightning storm was cool, but the lightning didn't end up hitting all that much. This will destroy every unit and weak structure in the base and do heavy damage to some of the tougher buildings.

I took a bunch of screenshots from the clifftop that show off just how large the attack area on this is.

I'm literally hitting everything in the base and a bunch of stuff that isn't, that's how large the attack radius is. I love meteors.

The UCS base is running off of that single damaged power plant now. Take that down and the whole base goes dark.

The power range extenders and small towers were destroyed in the meteor shower so those intimidating defenses are now completely useless. Take that you dumb robots!

UCS power plants have very, very impressive explosions. I think they're using a very unsafe power generation method if the plant blows up like an atom bomb when you destroy it.

Base clean up on a UCS base is exactly like clean up on an ED base except everything is red instead of green.

We win! Yay us! I'm still bummed that the developers couldn't have made more descriptive briefings for what is probably the most important and dramatic mission on the LC campaign. I hope including Fang's asylum letter made up for that.

We also get another news story, this time with explosions on the intro! I guess Sombra found some Michael Bay movies and told the news propaganda people to run with it.

There's our Thunderer bomber! She's going to be aces on the battlefield. It's a shame I leveled both bases before the research finished.

This is the last ammo upgrade in the game for the LC.

And these are the last weapons upgrades. The heavy sonic cannon is only going to go on our Crusher tanks since it's rate of fire isn't that great. I throw an electro-cannon/sonic cannon secondary to give balance the damage a bit.

Wait, I thought I just said we had researched the last weapons upgrade in the game for the LC?

Yes. Except the LC (unlike all the other factions) get a secret weapon if you research all their energy weapons. The Plasma Artillery also comes with a unique unit chassis, the Crion.

And it does 1000 damage in one shot. It only carries one shot at a time so you'll need to wait for it to reload but this might be the most overpowered weapon in a game full of ridiculous overpowered weapons. Of course this means I'll be building a bunch to show off next mission/when I can get back under the units limit.

We're better than Major Wlad and that stupid AI Defender 2200. What a lame name. Couldn't they have given the UCS AI commanders more exciting names?

Earth looks like shit now. It says that's Peru but I can't even tell what continent is what anymore. We're in the endgame so it's going to be a rough fight from here on.